Photocurable resin compositions have been used broadly as photosensitive resin materials for photoresists such as printed circuit board (PCB) resists and liquid crystal display (LCD) resists, etc., hard coatings, optical fiber coatings, optical disk coatings, paper coatings, wood coatings, paints, photosensitive lithographic plates, printing inks, adhesives, and other products. As such photocurable resin compositions, those based on acrylate resin represented by epoxy acrylate, urethane acrylate, etc., alicyclic epoxy resin, vinyl ether resin, etc. have already been commercially implemented.
However, acrylate resin is very poor in surface curability because of the oxygen-associated inhibition of polymerization at curing and in addition is so high in viscosity that it does not lend itself well to a high-speed UV-curing system. Alicyclic epoxy resin is free from the problem of said oxygen-associated inhibition of polymerization, but is very low in curing rate in a cationic photocuring system.
As a photosensitive resin composition improved in the above aspects, there is known a vinyl ether resin but its curing rate is not high enough for use in a high-speed curing system.
In Journal of Polymer Science, Part A, Polymer Chemistry, 31, 1473 (1993), Crivello et al. disclose a propenyl ether compound which cures faster than a vinyl ether compound upon exposure to light irradiation. However, this compound is highly volatile and not sufficiently fluid so that it is not fully satisfactory in industrial applications. Moreover, it is inadequate in hardness and adhesion to metal. Therefore, a demand exists for a high-speed-curing photosensitive resin composition capable of meeting industrial requirements.